An Impressive Book

Reading has always been one of my greatest passions. But the life as a software engineer is so monotonous that you hardly find time to do something interesting. Not that I am busy to the core or something like that. But this routine kind of a life style has created some kind of an emptiness in me that nothing seems to be interesting any more.. I am not a bookish kind of person, but still had taken it up as a hobby ever since I was 6. I still remember those days when I used to compete with friends on who has read the maximum number of secret sevens, Famous fives and Nancy Drews. Life has changed so much now. I have to struggle to concentrate and read for more than an hour these days. I was just cribbing about my friend on how out of track I was on books these days, that she gave me this book by Mitch Alboms. I wouldnt say that it was the most amazing of all books that I have ever read.. But then this was one book, which i found easy to concentrate and the one I got to read after a long time. So sofware guys do check out this book. Its called The Five people you meet in heaven.

All of us would have visualised as to how life after death would be, at some point or the other.. We imagine heaven as a lush green land.. some kind of a paradise or a place where we get together with those people we have known and those who departed from us, somewhere along the long journey of life. But the author of this book has a different idea. According to him, life after death is the time, when we get the answers to those questions that went unanswered during our course of time on earth. He also says that the biggest gift that life can ever give us is the answer key to the question paper called life.. An answer key, that makes all of us believe that we were here for a purpose and like shakespeare puts it.. All the world is a stage and we are all actors.. The central character of the book, meets five people in heaven, some of them strangers, and his loved ones, who make him understand why he lived and teach him a few lessons that he couldnt take up inspite of living 83 years on earth.

Not that this book taught me a few things I never knew about.. But reminded me about a few things that I had stopped giving attention to, in the process of taking part in the running race called life.. There might be a few shattered dreams, broken hopes and what not.. But all of these put together make our life more meaningful. None of us know for sure as to how life after death is gonna be like.. and I dont actually care how it is going to be like.. But we can actually live a life of purpose, purposeful to us and to somebody else. Purposeful to us by striving hard for what we want to achieve.. Anything Major or minor.. Atleast a small initiative that makes us feel that we have accomplished something.. What makes our life ever more purposeful is sharing what we have learnt, by imparting hope and keeping up someone's trust or atleast by being the reason for somebody to smile....